Thursday, 14 January 2016

ELI5: Why must I enter a CAPTCHA to pay a bill? Are they afraid a robot is going to enter a credit card on my behalf?

Answer 1: Yes, captchas are generally used to prevent automation by using (ro)bots. However, there are a couple of side effects. One would be that you can not “accidentally” pay the bill because you would have to enter the captcha first. A bot would also not just enter “a credit card” but instead do pretty much anything on there - like trying out different card numbers. Using a captcha verifies that you are human. When developers are unsure whether or not to use a captcha then they will usually go for it because you know, better have than not have.

Answer 2: I am a web developer and we do it because of the tremendous number of bots that randomly submit forms in an effort to spider our sites, and create junk as a result. A CAPTCHA dramatically lessens the amount of crap data we get.

 - without seeing the site in question, I must also presume the page does not require authentication (username/password) to use, which allows ‘bots in, causing the problems (and is likely a poor design).

Explain Like I`m Five: good questions, best answers.

Share:

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Total Pageviews